Herbicides (glyphosate and similar)
⚠ If exposure just happened
Contact your vet or an animal poison control hotline immediately — don't wait to see if symptoms develop. Bring packaging or plant material with you if possible.
How Much Is Dangerous
Typical consumer-grade lawn or garden herbicide exposure — brushing against recently treated grass, or a small incidental lick from a spray bottle nozzle — is usually low-risk based on available evidence; direct ingestion of concentrated, undiluted product represents a meaningfully more significant exposure that shouldn't be assumed equally minor.
Symptoms
- Drooling
- Vomiting
- Mild diarrhea
- Skin or eye irritation with direct contact
- Loss of appetite
Time to Symptoms
Usually within a few hours of exposure.
First Aid Steps
- Rinse skin, paws, or eyes thoroughly with water if direct contact occurred
- Keep the cat off any treated lawn or garden areas until the product has fully dried, following the specific product's label instructions for re-entry timing
- Contact a veterinarian if vomiting or diarrhea persists beyond a day, or if concentrated/undiluted product specifically was ingested rather than just incidental contact with a treated, drying surface
What Not To Do
- Do not let cats onto treated lawn or garden areas until fully dry, following the product label — this drying-period exposure is genuinely the most common real-world route by which cats encounter this category of product
- Do not assume "generally low toxicity" means "zero risk regardless of concentration or amount" — a concentrated, undiluted ingestion is a meaningfully different exposure than the more common incidental contact scenario
Veterinary Treatment
Usually supportive care only is needed — rinsing affected areas, anti-nausea medication if needed for ongoing GI upset, and monitoring, with more active decontamination reserved for the less common scenario of concentrated product ingestion.
Toxic Compound
Glyphosate and similar herbicide active ingredients generally have comparatively low toxicity to mammals at the concentrations found in typical consumer lawn and garden products, meaning most feline exposures to this category produce mild gastrointestinal irritation rather than the kind of severe systemic effects seen with insecticides or many other entries on this list.